Brooklyn absinthe distillery Standard Spirit, established in 2014, began with a conundrum any New York City twenty-something has undoubtedly faced: how to get liquor on the cheap.

“We wanted cheap booze,” said Taras Hrabowsky, an upstate New York native who started playing around with recipes with his Brooklyn roommates straight out of college. “We just started messing around in our apartment.”

The roommates honed in on making their own absinthe, the infamous spirit outlawed in the United States until 2010.

“We wanted to see what it was like,” he said. “And lo and behold, it gives you a different buzz for sure. From the first sip, it instantly peels back your eye a bit. It wakes you up.”

And for those who can’t quite handle the anise, sugary taste generally associated with absinthe, Standard Spirit is the way to go, offering a taste more akin to whiskey.

“We distill ours like a rye whiskey,” he said. “You get the absinthe buzz because we’re distilling ours with wormwood, but it gives another flavor profile.”